McLean, Va. – "Pig Farm", a darkly comedic love story, will be the third presentation in the inaugural season of 1st Stage, Tyson Corner, Virginia's first professional theatre. The show will open February 13 and run through March 8.
"It's a wild take on pig-farming, marital bliss, and governmental interference,"
Pig Farm was written by Greg Kotis, who wrote the book for the Tony Award winning musical Urinetown. "It's got the same edgy style," Krikstan said. "It combines humor with some pretty biting commentary – in this case, on the environment and government regulation."
1st Stage, located near Leesburg Pike and the Dulles Toll Road in the fast-growing Tysons Corner area of Northern Virginia, is home to a non-profit theatre school and 100-seat performance space. Its primary mission is to build a bridge between educational and professional theatre for developing professional artists.
Pig Farm is the story of a pig farmer who's struggling to keep his business going, whose wife is dallying with the new farmhand – a 17-year-old fresh out of Juvenile Hall – and who has suddenly come under the eye of the Feds, in the person of a gun-toting EPA inspector asking questions about sludge washing up on the shores of the Potomac. When the Feds demand a count of just how many pigs there are on the farm, havoc reigns.
The play's original run – at the Roundabout Theatre in New York and the Old Globe in San Diego – was in 2006.
1st Stage opened in September with "The Suicide", a Russian comedy which won strong reviews, and followed last month with "The Violet Hour", a tragicomic mind-bender, which also won praise from critics. The theatre chose to locate in Tyson's Corner because of the area's expected emergence as an urban center. Its mission statement says 1st Stage "will work to create a strong cultural institution that complements the economic strengths of the community". One of the 1st Stage's key goals is to become a resource that "connects the county and community to fresh, imaginative interpretations of classic and contemporary theatre work."
"The county – this entire region – has strong creative needs," Krikstan said. "We see lifelong learning in the arts as a core value in Fairfax County."
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Links to reviews of The Suicide:
DC THEATRE SCENE: http://dctheatrescene.com/
SHOWBIZRADIO:
Links to reviews of The Violet Hour:
WASHINGTON POST: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
DC EXAMINER: http://www.dcexaminer.com/
DC THEATRE SCENE: http://dctheatrescene.com/
SHOWBIZRADIO:
POTOMAC STAGES: http://www.potomacstages.com/
